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Abstract:
Since the first synthetic gene was synthesized in 1970s, the efficiency
and the capacity of made-to-order DNA sequence synthesis has increased
by several orders of magnitude. Advances in DNA synthesis and assembly
over the past years has resulted in a steep drop in price for custom
made DNA. Similar effects were observed in DNA sequencing technologies
which underpin DNA-reading projects. Today, synthetic DNA sequences with
more than 10 000 bps and turnaround times of a few weeks are
commercially available. This enables researchers to perform large-scale
projects to write synthetic chromosomes and characterize their
functionalities in vivo. Synthetic genomics opens up new paradigms to
study the genome fundamentals and engineer novel biological functions.